To be fair, I'm a little torn. I've read the article and I can see where the producer is coming from, and his hands are probably tied considering it's the higher-ups at Atlus and Sega who make the final decisions. Video game development costs a lot of time and money and deadlines and budget need to be kept reasonable, and I'm not gonna pretend like I know better than a literal game producer. I'd rather have game company employees not abused than force out content even though I really want to see it.
Although I find it to be a bit of a shame that Atlus wasn't willing to provide the team with the necessary time and money. I'm sure their talented and passionate developers would've loved to add Kotone in if they were able to. I wish they at least found a compromise somewhere and cut some content within the FeMC route, even though that could also polarize the fanbase.
Anyways, I'm curious what you all think about this cuz I've seen this subject pop up quite a few times on this sub.
I just hope persona 6 has a female protagonist it sucks how male centric these games are despite having a large female audience
Here is the thing: FeMC should not have been something added later, but something they did during regular development. Would she cost more than Aigis/Answer? Sure. But the fact that they provide the Answer also as paid DLC is a fucking slap in the face.
It sucks but I’m not super surprised. Atlus always disappoints lol
I think this was pretty clear a long time ago, so… my reaction is pretty muted. It sucks, but it was clearly never going to happen.
I find it more obnoxious they chopped off the entire ending chapter of the game in ‘The Answer’ to add later as an expensive DLC.
ATLUS doesn’t value its female players.
I don’t mean that cataclysmically, I just mean, as a business, their guiding ethos, as dictated by marketers and producers, is a risk-averse prioritization of their male fanbase. They don’t view us as an exciting untapped market, they see us more as a potential compromising of their brand integrity. So they stick to the market they know, and they keep making the same 5 games about average male Japanese high school students.
And, just like I think, for example, that the marketers, executives, and producers at Disney and their current risk-averse strategy of saturating the market with safe sequels is transparently misguided, I think ATLUS’s risk-aversion to expanding their demographics is the wrong move.
(Also both companies have this habit of really quarter-assed “experiments” that fatalistically validate their preconceived biases. “We did no marketing for *Home on the Range*/*Princess and the Frog*/*Stange World* and it flopped, therefore we were correct in our assumption that traditional 2D animation/ethnically diverse content/LGBTQ+ content is a direction we should move away from.” “We did no marketing for Soul Hackers 2, (and also had one guy make the whole thing in unity,) and it underperformed, therefore we were correct in our assumption that female protagonists (even though Ringo is less *female* and more *female-presenting*-digital-construct) is a direction we should move away from”)
*tl;dr* I wasn’t surprised. By that point my opinion of ATLUS and the P3R production had already soured into cynicism, and in the same way I no longer stay alert to upcoming Blizzard games, I’m pretty much out of optimism when it comes to ATLUS and Persona.
Me, a girl, who just wants to play persona from a girls point of view…Sometimes I wish we got to be the target audience for video games more often :/
The only good thing I can even possibly glean from this turn out is maybe/hopefully it catches their attention to how badly a Femc is wanted.
My thoughts are that Atlus is run by hacks and misogynists, but am I surprised? Not really. Even the idea that they’d hold her over us as another form of pink tax we’d have to pay to buy her through DLC was a pipe dream, considering just how little they seem to believe their female fans matter to begin with, combined with the pathetically narrow-minded assumption of ‘why would a male player ever want to play Minako/Kotone, anyway?’
I’m confused as to why she wasn’t just included from the start.
Yeah, it would have meant recording twice as many social link cut scenes and animating those alternate scenes.
It would have meant either making the language when they refer to the protagonist gender neutral, or just recording lines for different pronoun usage.
But it’s not like they had to write a new script.
This is a remake of an older game that could’ve been a final definitive version. But now it’s just a prettier version of a PS2 game.
It really sucks. I always prefer to play women in RPGs. I’m hoping that modders can implement her somehow
That’s terrible, never playing it then sadly. I hate how they alienate girl gamers
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
Obviously I’m just memeing there. It’s not like it’s new information. But its seriously the main thing I wanted a remake to include. The fact that a remake of one of my favorite video games exists but without a key element I wanted in it will just be a constant, painful disappointment
Killed my interest in the game.
What bothered me more is the creepy alternative outfits they have for your female party members that you can equip them with in Tarturas.
Outfits like “battle panties” for Yukari that the player gets as a reward for beating a boss. It’s really gross, and you have these men in their 20s and 30s getting their rocks off looking at these teenagers dressed up half naked.
I think Atlus needs to fix their pedophile problem before they start adding in future female protagonists imo. That’s right. Pedophiles. Whoever thought that was a great idea in Atlus should be investigated.
This is super shitty
I have one word for this: cowards
Finally. I feel like he confirmed this like 50‐11 times already. How many times does he have to say “it’s not happening” for people to realize he’s serious.
My thoughts are the same. I’m not buying reload, there’s no reason for me to buy a game for the third time that’s not the definitive.
I’ll get the person 1 and 2 remakes and them I’m probably done with persona and just stick to smt.
I’m not surprised, but I hadn’t bought this game yet because I was bummed it didn’t have the female protagonist. It’s unlike me to skip an Atlus game, but I think I will here.
Disappointed but sadly not surprised. Time to play P3P and nothing else then 🫠
Honestly I’m kinda surprised to see they’re willing to lose half of their buyers but now I realize were never considered part of their clients to begin with 💀
I really enjoyed P3P but my excitement for the remake died with the decision to not include FeMC. I have unfollowed Atlus and have stopped buying their games. It is one thing to make a game with no FeMC, but to remake a game with one and not include it just feels like we are being flicked off. I don’t always need to play as a girl, but the message is clear and there are tons of other games to play. I am not saying I will never purchase an Atlus game again, but I will no longer prioritize them. Adding another girl in Persona 5 Royal but not a FeMC was insulting enough.
In an 18 day span after the game was released there’s already a usable FeMC mod, it’s not complete but art and assets are already far along, and that’s with just a few amateur modders
There’s 0 reason it would’ve taken a significant amount of time to add her for the actual development team
Just boycott Atlus… If the FeMC does not come to P3R Officially either as DLC or an Updated Release or something i won’t care about Atlus anymore unless there is FeMC in Persona 6…
Like, ultimately, it’s not a super big deal, but I have no reason to continue playing Persona games.
It’s bad enough that 5 was so similar to 4, but the fact that they are taking away an alternative narrative perspective eliminates a lot of the depth these extremely tropey characters might otherwise have. I think mixing the base game up is necessary for the longevity of this series given how the social links are 50% of the play and the monsters more-or-less repeat every title.
The explanation they gave (that they continually give) for not adding FMC seems a lot like PR/gaslighting. I’m like, you have to spend money to make money. If spending money remaking the game is an issue, why even start doing it in the first place? Why not just ask people to donate to the studio without buying anything? It seems like modders are adding her into the game at a clip.
I play many games with multiple characters/perspectives and add-ons. If you create a “definitive remake” of a game and leave out about a third of the associated content, that’s changing the definition of definitive. I think what he meant to say is, “We think you all will buy it no matter how half-assed of a job we do.”
These explanations always make me lose respect for atlus because they don’t make a lot of sense and they make me feel like a company is trying to manipulate me through dishonesty and lies by omission. Just say yall reoriented your business around marketing these series solely to lonely teen boys.
Anyway, speaking of wasting resources, and developing games being too expensive for a game company to do, when’s their 20th P4/P5 rhythm/chibi/fighting game spinoff coming out?
Disappointed but not suprised pretty much. I played the whole thing on gamepass (deciding against properly buying it after the no FeMC/Answer news) and while I really enjoyed my time with it I wont be back for the dlc. Really unhappy with how Atlus handled a lot of this.
Atlus only cares about their male audience as usual 🤷
I’m done with Atlus either way & im taking a break from Sega. Atlus doesn’t give a crap about us female gamers. It was a deal breaker when I heard Kotone was removed from the game. P3P is old as hell, why would I want a crap port when I would have preferred her in the remake. They don’t want to expand to the female player base, but have no problem taking our money. They think we’ll just be contempt playing as boring chosen one male mc who has a harem. They’ll make no effort to appeal to us so why continue to give them money. If the rumor that both protagonists in P6 are male then that should be enough proof to female gamers. They don’t want us and the toxic fanboys don’t want us playing & ‘ruining’ their games. It’s Sega/Atlus lost in the end cause I would have bought reload & I’m sure many female players would have bought reload.
Imagine if they pull a *Dead Rising 2: Off the Record* and rerelease the game but with FeMC instead of MC.
I’m pissed, and hoping the fan mod plans to add her come to fruition.
Simple, won’t buy.
I always believed that games developed by Japanese companies are the least friendly towards female players, and this news has further confirmed my belief.
It was expected since they announced the game, you cant make a protagonist dlc, making her route would be pretty much remaking a lot of stuff in the game since she not just a reskin.
So I read that article too, and while I understand the reasoning, I’m not convinced. The biggest problem is that them lying about it being unrealistic and them telling the truth about it being unrealistic sound exactly the same, and considering the fairly sizable backlash they’re facing they have some pretty good reasons to lie.
*Does poll and sees that 40 percent of P5 players were women*
ATLUS: Clearly there’s no money to be made marketing to women, we’ve hit the cap.
Between this and the fact that even if you bought the 100€ version of the game, the DLC is not included; I’m really pissed.
Preface; I’ve not played any of the Persona games.
That being said: Boo this company! Boo it! *<throws hat>*
Same old ridiculous excuses guys use to not admit that they simply don’t want to add female protagonists.
It would’ve been better if they were at least honest.
I had so much hope for this remake after she was added to PQ2, cause I thought it was ATLUS hinting at her realizing her importance or something. Alas, it was just wishful thinking.
I’ve played through P3/P3P so many times, and when stripped down to the bare bones I can whole-heartedly say that I think FeMC side is so much more impactful to me. Not just because she’s a girl, but because the dialogues with other characters felt so much more… realistic. I felt closer to every social link in her run, more than I ever did to the original ones.
It’s ironic that people will constantly complain about her “not fitting in” with this storyline, then go to bat for the most unrealistic anime tropes. I’m sure that alone can say a lot about a person depending on what their specific reasons are for not liking FeMC.
I remember seeing this old youtube vid where it was two guys whining about Kotone for like 30min straight, just hating on her for no logical reason; I was so hoping that whenever this remake came out that she’d be in, if only to spite mindless jerks like that. RIP to my lil passive aggressive dream, I guess LOL.
Given how quickly the FEMC mod is going by just a group of dedicated fans with lives and no actual internal dev resources…. Naurrrrr this ain’t it. If anyone had actually cared just a little to make this a priority day one I do not think THIS would have been the thing that sent the budget and dev timeline over the edge
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